Saints Survive to Earn Repeat Try
March 13, 2014
By Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
EAST LANSING – St. Ignace senior Kelley Wright set an MHSAA record by being part of her 102nd high school basketball victory Thursday at the Breslin Center.
This had to be one of the ugliest – but could end up one of the most meaningful as well.
Wright and the Saints earned an opportunity to play for a second-straight MHSAA championship and third in her four season with a 34-30 Semifinal win over Grosse Pointe Woods University Liggett.
St. Ignace improved to 24-2 this winter after finishing 27-0, 25-1 and 26-1, the last three seasons, respectively. Redford Bishop Borgess’ Aiysha Smith formerly held the record with 101 wins from 1994-97.
“All I know is I’ve lost four times. I never really thought about all the times I’ve won,” Wright said. “I play for a really good team, and I can’t take credit for that just because I moved up freshman year. All of us deserve it, and fortunately we’re all getting the benefits from it.”
Wright said after she expects to “feel sick and little nervous” before her team takes on Saginaw Nouvel in Saturday’s 4 p.m. Final.
Saints coach Dorene Ingalls joked about firing husband Doug as the team’s shooting coach after a performance that left both teams at least in some disbelief, if not feeling a little ill as well.
St. Ignace made a meager 19 percent of its shots from the floor. Liggett connected on 25 percent. Still, the Saints led by seven heading into the fourth quarter – but Liggett tied the score at 30-30 with 2:36 to play.
The Knights (20-4) had an opportunity to go ahead before St. Ignace senior Emily Hinsman gave the Saints back the lead with a put back with 1:37 to play. The teams then traded misses and turnovers as Hinsman stepped in to intercept a pass into the paint with 39 seconds. Junior guard Margo Brown made two free throws seconds later to push the lead to its final margin of four.
“It was frustrating at first. They’d just trap you as soon as you got the ball in your hands,” said Liggett junior Lauren Ristovski, who led the team with nine points. “They’d just jump out and trap you, making you throw the ball away.”
It’s not the kind of game Wright has been part of winning too often during the last four seasons and especially during this current 18-win streak. But the Saints made it go in part with 59-36 rebounding advantage, which included grabbing 28 on the offensive side. The Saints also had only 12 turnovers to Liggett’s 18.
Wright led the Saints with eight points and nine rebounds, while Hinsman grabbed 13 rebounds and sophomore center Abbey Ostman had seven points and 12 rebounds.
“Once we got back in January, our practices when we came back were intense. Just a different level,” Dorene Ingalls said. “Our team took over a different identity at that moment. Kelley and I were on the side, and (I told her) this is going to be really good.
“I’m glad we got an opportunity to show on Saturday that we’re better than we showed tonight. But you’ve got to give Liggett a lot of credit for that.”
St. Ignace also got a helpful and inspiring bucket late from junior Autumn Orm; she had four points total, despite being restricted to only 30-second spurts of playing time because of a neurological disorder that won’t allow her to be active for longer, Ingalls said. “She was getting deflections, getting rebounds. That was our inspiration. That’s why we won,” Ingalls added.
The Knights nearly pulled off the comeback despite all five starters playing all 32 minutes. The team’s rotation got down to that minimum in part because Liggett lost junior forward Haley Neuenfeldt to a knee injury in the final regular-season game.
But three of this season’s starters also started on the 2012 team that finished Class C runner-up. And they helped the Knights improve on last season’s run, which ended during the Regional.
“I expected for us to play hard enough to get through the District and do better than last year. That’s what we preached,” Liggett coach Omar Ahart said. “Once we got to the Regional Final, and got through that one, (I thought) someone has to win state. Why not us?”
Click for a complete box score and video from the press conference.
PHOTOS: (Top) St. Ignace’s Emily Hinsman (34) and Liggett’s Kendall McConico battle for a loose ball Thursday. (Middle) Saints junior Autumn Orm (10) drives against Knights senior Angelia Evangelista.
HIGHLIGHTS: (1) Autumn Orm takes a pass from Emily Hinsman and hits a jumper with 3:37 to play to give St. Ignace a 30-26 lead against Grosse Pointe Woods University Liggett. (2) Nia Ahart of Liggett ties the game at 30-30 with 2:36 to go on a nifty runner. St. Ignace won the game, 34-30.
Schmitz Makes Most of Many Opportunities
January 12, 2018
By Doug Donnelly
Special for Second Half
MORENCI – When Madysen Schmitz was a freshman in high school, she told Morenci athletic director Kay Johnson she was going to earn 16 varsity letters with the Bulldogs.
Schmitz was wrong. If all goes as planned, she’ll earn 18.
“I’m used to being involved,” Schmitz said.
Her to-do calendar leaves little time for anything else.
A senior, Schmitz has never played a sport at the junior varsity level. She already has completed four years of varsity volleyball and this past fall was part of Morenci’s club equestrian team. This winter, she is not only one of the top scorers in Lenawee County in basketball, she’s a member of the competitive cheerleading team. Later this year she plans to be a dual-sport athlete for the fourth straight spring, playing softball and competing as part of the Bulldogs track & field squad. She also has been a sideline cheerleader for Morenci.
“Mady is naturally talented,” Johnson said. “She is fast and jumps so well. She’s been doing all of the cheer moves for some time now. She’s just very athletic.”
Morenci allows athletes to compete in multiple sports during one season as long as they abide by the guidelines set forth by the district. One of those rules is to pick a predominate sport that takes precedent in any season. Last spring, for example, it was track & field instead of softball. Schmitz qualified for the MHSAA Finals in the long jump. After the event was over, she drove back to southeast Michigan to play in a Division 4 District Final for the softball team.
“My coaches work with me and around my schedule,” Schmitz said. “If they know I have basketball practice after school, we’ll have cheer practice in the morning. Or, if there is a game one night, we won’t have practice in another sport that day. They work with me.”
Johnson, who is also the Morenci softball coach, said the district supports dual-sport athletes.
“We allow it, but not many athletes do it,” Johnson said. “It’s tough to compete in multiple sports at the same time. With our enrollment (just more than 100 girls at last count), if we have an athlete that wants to do two sports, we’ll let them.”
Schmitz helped Morenci’s softball team into the MHSAA Semifinals as a sophomore. She’s an outfielder who covers a lot of ground because of her speed.
Success is nothing new to Schmitz, who moved from Evergreen Schools in Ohio to Morenci before her freshman year. She’s leaving quite a legacy on the ultra-successful Morenci athletic program. She’s received numerous honors from the Tri-County Conference, was second team all-county in basketball last season and enters Friday’s home game against co-TCC basketball leader Ottawa Lake Whiteford with 987 career points. The only other Morenci girl to reach 1,000 career points is Kylene Spiegel, now in her first season as head women’s basketball coach at Lawrence Tech.
The Bulldogs have won 13 games each of the past two seasons and are off to a 7-2 start heading into the game with Whiteford. Larry Bruce is in his fourth year as the head varsity girls basketball coach after a long and successful run as the Bulldogs boys coach in the 1970s and 1980s. Bruce had a heart attack in July and, while still going through regular rehabilitation exercises, is back on the bench.
“I had four bypasses in August,” he said. “I’m good now. I work out a couple days a week. I feel normal.”
His return to the basketball court, he said, was never in doubt.
“Some other people may have doubted it, but I didn’t,” the veteran coach said.
The Bulldogs won four straight TCC basketball titles from 1985 to 1988 and four more from 2001-2004, but none since. They are trying to end Adrian Madison’s six-year reign at the top of the league. Whiteford and Morenci are both 5-0 in league play entering tonight.
“He’s awesome,” Schmitz said of Bruce. “He helps us a lot. We have really good team chemistry this year. We are all happy he is back.”
This season, Schmitz was sluggish to start the season while shaking off some effects of an ankle injury suffered in volleyball. But, after scoring 34 points against Clinton, 28 against Reading and 23 against Pittsford, her game appears to be back on track.
“She’s a durable kid,” Bruce said. “She’s jumps so high and is so fast. It’s kind of scary when she goes up in traffic to get a rebound. She’s always flying down the floor. She goes all out. That’s the only way she knows. She’s been that way since she was a freshman.”
Bruce recalls the time Schmitz was injured and did have to miss a couple of games.
“She’s left-handed,” he said. “She had her left arm in a sling, but was in the gym at night, shooting with her right hand. That is when she was a freshman. She wanted to get better shooting with her right hand. She’s worked pretty hard at the game.”
Schmitz isn’t the only high scorer on the Bulldogs’ roster. Junior Daelyn Merillat has more than 800 career points.
Bruce supports Schmitz’s choice to play multiple sports.
“It really hasn’t been an issue,” he said. “There was one night where she missed a practice because she had a cheerleading event. It wasn’t a big deal. The coaches work with her.”
In addition to her athletic ability, she also gets it done in the classroom. Schmitz is a National Honor Society student with a cumulative 3.49 grade-point average.
"There are definitely some late nights just trying to keep up with it all," Schmitz said. "You just have to manage your time and stay on top of everything. I'm used to it though. I've been this way my whole life. It's all worth it. I love sports.”
Doug Donnelly has served as a sports and news reporter and city editor over 25 years, writing for the Daily Chief-Union in Upper Sandusky, Ohio from 1992-1995, the Monroe Evening News from 1995-2012 and the Adrian Daily Telegram since 2013. He's also written a book on high school basketball in Monroe County and compiles record books for various schools in southeast Michigan. E-mail him at [email protected] with story ideas for Lenawee and Monroe counties.
PHOTO: (Top) Morenci’s Madysen Schmitz looks for an opportunity on offense against Pittsford on Jan. 3. (Middle) Schmitz goes hard to the basket during the 68-56 loss, one of only two defeats this season for the Bulldogs. (Photos by Mike Dickie.)